This mail is publicly posted to a distribution list as part of a process
of public discussion, any automatically generated statements to the
contrary non-withstanding. It is the opinion of the author, and does not
represent an official company view. (01)
I have recently been looking at a couple of projects on context-aware
systems. Firstly, it was necessary to draw a distinction between
context-aware and context-sensitive. In a context-aware system, the
objective is to identify information that is salient to the task at
hand, whereas if something is context-sensitive, the meaning of the
thing stated changes according to context. It seems that the discussion
has been focused on context in context-sensitive systems. (02)
An example of a context-aware problem is, "I am designing a repair to an
aircraft, find me all salient information" (salient = relevant and
important). In this case, salience correlates with factors such as the
aircraft type, the position of the repair, any previous repairs to the
same aircraft, who is doing the repair, etc. (03)
In creating a context-aware system, there is no evident way of creating
something called <i>context</i>. From the data modelling perspective,
creating a context model would involve creating a relationship between
every pair of real-world entities, making this a triadic relationship to
'context' and then qualifying this with a salience property. Both from
the viewpoints of data modelling, and populating the model, this is
madness. (04)
A saner model for context-awareness is to treat context as a process
combining a query with a response ranking algorithm. That is, there is
no such <i>thing</i> as context, but it is a process by which
relationships are evaluated. That is, I would not expect it to appear in
an ontology of things, even where that ontology includes "the universe",
I would expect it to appear in an ontology of *process, including
concepts such as process, cause, relationship, etc. (05)
I would suspect the same applies to context in "context-sensitive", but
I would at most 10% assert it. (06)
Sean Barker
BAE SYSTEMS - Advanced Technology Centre
Bristol, UK
+44(0) 117 302 8184 (07)
BAE Systems (Operations) Limited
Registered Office: Warwick House, PO Box 87, Farnborough Aerospace
Centre, Farnborough, Hants, GU14 6YU, UK
Registered in England & Wales No: 1996687 (08)
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